Theme

Warriors can be a raging berserker or an iron-clad juggernaut, capable of withstanding tremendous attacks while protecting their allies from harm. They have a wide variety of attacks that do everything from cripple their enemies, to dealing massive amounts of damage in a single retaliatory blow, and enhancing their allies' fighting ability with battle shouts. They excel at fighting multiple opponents at once, gaining rage from every blow dealt or received to unleash their attacks. Warriors are a versatile class with a variety of play-styles to choose from.

The Warrior can be a defensive, shielded tank, a damage-dealing powerhouse, or a mixture of the two. Their abilities obviously pertain to the art of close combat; their stances carry with them different moves for different situations and party setups. All in all, the Warrior is one of the prime candidates to capture and hold the attention of creatures while they die to sword and spell.

Class Capabilities

The warrior class is, at its heart, the king of melee. Warriors are capable of standing in front of a mob and both taking and delivering a beating to its opponents.

Warriors are Warcraft's primary tanking class as well as being capable of producing very strong melee DPS using either two-hand weapons or dual wielding one-hand weapons. Like Rogues, Warriors do not use Mana to power their abilities; instead, they use the unique Rage combat mechanic, which allows Warriors to use more and more attacks as they deal damage and are themselves hit.

Warriors are a fairly easy class to play. Even with bad gear, even if you're not playing that well, you can use a Warrior with some modicum of success (although vastly less than you could get with a pet class, such as Warlocks or Hunters). They are also one of the most complex classes in Warcraft, and require real effort in order to master the use of stances and to monitor your rage. Easy to play; hard to master.

Warriors can specialize in three talent trees, each with their own specialties and weaknesses. Arms, which is the specialized tree for PvP, two-handed weapons and balanced combat; Fury, which is the specialized tree for PvE damage-dealing, dual-wielding weapons and offense; and Protection, which is the specialized tree for PvE tanking, shields and defense. There is, of course, a degree of cross-training - specialized Arms Warriors are popular in PvE for the debuffs they provide, for example - and any Warrior can and will be asked to perform the job of a tank at some point in their careers no matter what their specialty is.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Warriors are immensely gear dependent, which functions as both a minor strength and a weakness - because you have no real ways to avoid damage, you cannot compensate for weaker gear in the way that Hunters, Warlocks, Rogues or Mages can by simply not getting hit. Especially in solo play, once you've started combat you're essentially locked in for the duration with a very limited number of escape tricks if the combat turns against you. There are a wide variety of tricks you can use to enhance your survivability, but if you're running around in outdated greens you ARE going to take a beating every fight. Conversely, though, once you do acquire a strong set of armor and weapons you can be a real powerhouse, although since The Burning Crusade Warriors tend to scale up with superb gear far less than they scale downwards with inferior gear.

Because you can be versatile, you will be expected to be versatile. There isn't a Warrior in the world who isn't asked to tank for groups at least once, and typicially many, many times. You will need multiple sets of gear due to the wildly varying roles (tanking, DPS and PvP) and at least traditionally tend to be the leader in a given situation by virtue of being the tank.

More to the point, tanking effectively as a Warrior isn't easy. You don't have the one-touch idiot spells to trivialize multiple mob threat like Paladins get, or even the Swipe spam that Druids have access to. You will have to deal with bad healers, DPS classes that will ALWAYS pick three different targets - none of them yours - and complain when you can't keep all three packs of mobs on you. On the other hand, play well and you will be showered with invites to instances at all times of the day; find a good healer buddy and you'll have groups set for the rest of your career whenever you choose to make one.

Group Roles and Expectations

While a Warrior fulfilling a damage roll in a group is quite viable, the vast majority of the time in a group you will act as the tank. You will be required to hold aggro on multiple mobs and usually take the role of the de facto group leader, marking mobs to determine their kill order and instructing the group.